Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s accomplice in the Nazi genocide of European Jews, died four years ago in Damascus at the age of 98, according to Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Brunner, an Austrian-born SS captain, thus managed to escape justice for sending more than 128,500 Jews from France, Austria, Greece and Slovakia to death camps, where most of them were murdered.
Dr Zuroff, the director of the centre’s Israel office, says: “We have received information from a former German secret service agent who had served in the Middle East who said that Brunner was dead and buried in Damascus.
“Given his age it would not be surprising and the information came from someone who we consider reliable.
…..
Brunner only managed to slip the net at the end of the Second World War because his identity was mixed up with that of another SS officer, Anton Brunner, who was later executed for war crimes.During the post war years, he is said to have got work as a driver for the U.S Army in Berlin under a false name and claims also to have been involved in espionage.
He was linked to a shadowy unit of former Nazi generals called the Gehlen Organization, which was set up by the Americans to spy on the Soviets.
However, Brunner left Germany in 1954 using a fake Red Cross passport to travel to Rome and then across the Mediterranean to Egypt, where he worked as a weapons dealer.
The fugitive soon crossed into Syria and was hired as a government advisor under the pseudonym Dr. Georg Fischer.
He is believed to have advised Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, on torture and repression techniques picked up from his time with the SS.
While the Syrian authorities protected him from numerous extradition bids, there were still attempts on his life. He lost an eye and fingers on his left hand after opening letter bombs sent to him by Mossad agents in 1961 and 1980.
Brunner never repented his crimes, and indeed told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1987, “All of them deserved to die because they were the devil’s agents and human garbage. I have no regrets and would do it again.”
The Sun-Times reported that Brunner was protected round-the-clock by bodyguards provided by the Syrian government.
The employment and protection of the mass murderer Brunner ranks among the worst crimes of the Assad regimes. If Bashar Assad and other officials of his regime are ever brought to justice, I hope they are held accountable for it.
Also needing to be held accountable are Westerners on both the “Left” and the Right who have defended the regime which harbored this monster.
The Daily Express reported:
At least 67,400 of Brunner’s victims, including 6,000 children, were sent to their deaths from the Drancy internment camp outside Paris, which he commanded between June 1943 and August 1944.
Among them were relatives of award-winning poet, writer and former Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen, who revealed his father’s aunt and uncle were taken to Auschwitz via Drancy and never seen again.
“Lives are being lost and international interests being played out in Syria,” says the 67 year old from London. “I wouldn’t want the story of Brunner to be any kind of trophy or bargaining chip in all this.
“I would hope that as and when the people of Syria find peace and justice they are also able to tell us more of what he did, what happened to him and why.”
Michael Rosen sometimes used to comment at Harry’s Place and now comments at the Socialist Unity blog. I hope the next time John Wight of SU proclaims his support for Assad, Michael will have something to say about it.
Joseph W writes:
This is the “man” who put my family members on a train to Sobibor.
He escaped to Syria through the ratlines, where he became a government security advisor in the Damascus of the Assads.
A state sponsor of terrorism, Damascus in turn would play host to a range of terrorist groups including the PFLP-GC and Hamas.
In time, the Assads would turn on their own people, butchering thousands upon thousands.
Brunner died a guilty man, never having faced justice.
For some reason, I had been thinking about Brunner all weekend.
Then news of his death popped up on my Facebook news feed.
I cried, and then felt an enormous sense of relief.
